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The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) represents the worst in federal government over-reach and over-regulation. This top-down, one-size-fits-all attitude is strangling America's economic recovery. True reform should create additional value in our system, but the voluminous rules and dictates in PPACA are like weeds in a ditch inhibiting the flow of state innovation. Just last week, in one fell swoop, we received 1,039 pages of new rules. These regulations will significantly inhibit our ability to find better ways to get things done and save taxpayer money. The course of health care reform in this nation is moving in exactly the opposite direction it should.

There is a price to invoking race too frequently. It goes something like this: allege bias and racial motivations often enough, and the case gets old. Then, when the time comes when there is a genuinely ugly racial moment, and the claim needs to be made, it seems more shopworn than moving.

I have seen this equation play out countless times in Alabama, and I thought of it as the outcry builds over the shooting of an unarmed black child in Florida named Trayvon Martin. The details remain vague but there is at least an outline of what occurred. A neighborhood resident notices a black teenager who seems out of place to him; without reason or provocation, and contrary to the instructions of the police dispatcher he called, the man apparently follows the teenager. At some point, the two encounter each other and the episode ends horrifically. A 17-year-old with no history of violence, and nothing in his past to suggest he would resort to violence, is shot dead. The shooter was allowed to leave without being arrested and without even being subjected to an alcohol or drug test.

The shooter had a bloody nose and it suggests that his meeting with Martin turned into an altercation. But the case seems an almost perfect storm of bad, flawed intentions: one man’s suspicions of a kid who looked neither menacing nor suspicious; a police department’s insensitive decision to let the shooter walk away from the scene of a death; the local prosecutor's failure to see probable cause to convene a grand jury; and a state deadly force law that might have been written for the jungle and not the confines of a community. It is morally clear enough that, yes, the Justice Department ought to be preparing an assault on the law as well as an investigation of the shooting.

To all manner of people, Trayvon Martin's death is actually what real injustice looks like. Not the hyped “injustice” Democratic operatives invoke when they equate a voter ID requirement with a billy club, or when the Department of Justice compares an ID with brutal sixties-style suppression. Not the exaggerated “injustice” claimed by the Congressional Black Caucus when it blames the ethics investigations of so many of its members on a racist conspiracy, as if a bipartisan Ethics Committee had any plausible interest in doing such a thing. Not the over-heated, dramatized “injustice” ascribed to the execution of Troy Davis, a man whom nine witnesses said was a cop-killer and whose conviction survived each level of review from judges of every partisan and ideological stripe.

If only the race card weren’t played so promiscuously, more Americans might hear this child’s death as the inexcusable event it seems to be. If the zone weren’t already filled with cries of racism, the shooting might be a teachable moment about the ways prejudice shapes fear, and the ways that fear can distort lives, and the foolishness of laws that license that fear to kill.

The unspeakable tragedy would be if the facts bear out that Trayvon lost his life because he was pressed into the shape of a stereotype. The next tragedy would be if that life was lost in vain because the grievance over Trayvon sounded like just another cry of race from a familiar chorus line.

The Obama health care mandate is based on the principle that the government can force consunmers to buy a product that they do not want to buy like health insurance. If so, there is of course no reason why the government could not force consumers to buy and eat brocolli because doing so would reduce the cost of health care in the U.S. If the government can legislate a brocolli mandate why not also a mandate that everyone must run on a treadmill 30 minutes a day because that too will lower health care costs? Why not then add a mandate that healthy people with two normal kidneys donate the one they do not need to one of the thousands of people who die each year because of kidney failure? That too would solve an expensive health care problem. From each according to his ability to each according to his need?

And once we have a kidney donation mandate why not add to that a mandate that pregnant women either opt for or against abortion depending on which political party is in power that year in Washington? If the government can tell us what health care we must have, and what organs or body parts we must donate, why does that not lead to the governmant being able to mandate that women have abortions when the Democrats are in charge or that they endure all unwanted preganancies when the Republicans are in charge? Mandates are but a step on the road to slavery. "Give me liberty or give me death!"

Bank of America Experiments with Right to Rent for Foreclosed Homeowners

Bank of America announced this week that it is experimenting with a policy that would allow foreclosed homeowners to stay in their home as renters for up to three years. This is a simple and obvious solution to the foreclosure crisis that offers substantial benefits to homeowners and communities and could quite likely benefit lenders also.

The basic idea here is straightforward. Giving foreclosed homeowners the option to stay in their home for three years will give them a substantial degree of housing security. It would desirable to have longer period (bills introduced on this topic in the last two sessions of Congress by Reps. Grijlava and Kaptur provided for five years), but three years should be sufficient in many cases to allow for homeowners to adjust to the loss of their home.

Children may complete school and families may be able to rebuild their finances so that they are in a position to find an another acceptable rental unit, purchase another home, or possibly even re-buy their own home.

This is clearly preferable from the standpoint of communities that have been hit by a blight of foreclosure. The rental option keeps the home occupied. Furthermore, a former homeowner with a long-term lease will have a motivation to maintain the property so that it does not become an eyesore, pulling down property values.

It is quite likely that this rental option will also prove advantageous to lenders. There are substantial transactions associated with evicting former homeowners and selling off a repossessed house. During the period in which a house a house is left vacant it will generally not be properly maintained. It may even be vandalized by scavengers looking for copper pipes or anything else of value. Incurring these costs only to sell a home in a depressed market virtually ensures large losses.

By contrast, keeping a former homeowner in their house would maintain a stream of rental payments. The lender can then look to sell the home a few years down the road when, at least in some markets, prices are likely to have recovered.

It is encouraging that Bank of America has decided to pursue this rental option on its own. It would have been desirable if Congress had taken steps to require lenders to offer a rental option to foreclosed homeowners. This is a simple form of relief that would have been costless to taxpayers. It would also be desirable if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac follow the lead of Bank of America with the homes under their control, expanding and extending rental options that they currently have in place but are seldom used.

French special forces this past week surrounded a five-story apartment building in Toulouse where the suspect wanted for the murder of three French soldiers, a rabbi and three Jewish schoolchildren. Mohammed Merah was killed in a five-minute gun battle with police. He had admitted responsibility for these crimes. He also had plans to kill more.

The suspect was a French citizen of Algerian descent who claimed to have ties to Al Qaeda. He said his act was to avenge the deaths of Palestinaian children and to protest France's involvement in Afghanistan; which he recently traveled to.

Listening to reporters in France talk about the mood there and the attitude of the people it varied. One said there was more anti-Muslim sentiment among the people; and that bothered me.

Although Mohammed Merah was a Muslim, so were three of his victims. This is not a Muslim, or Islam, killing these people. This is a murderer who has no respect for human life; whether it be Christian, Jewish or Muslim.

All of the big three religions believe in the 10 Commandments, one of which is Thou Shalt Not Murder. So in my opinion, no one who murders can claim to be a part of any of those religions, or any religion for that matter as no religion condones or encourages murder.

I was most impressed by the president of France, Nicolas Sarcozy, who is up for re- election. In his speech to the people of France, he spoke of the French military and how their ethnicities, race and religion do not matter; it is their unifying fight for peace and freedom for the people of France.

America could use some of that unity. We pride ourselves on being a melting pot; a mix of various cultures, religions, races and ethnicities; yet we hate each other for those very differences.

The only way we will truly win the war on terror and stop these murderous massacres in the United States, France, Afghanistan, etc. is to unite. Remember, in The Art of War, one way to win the battle over your enemy is to "divide and conquer...." The more we as a nation divde, the more France as a nation divide and the more the world as humans divide, the more we give the murderers, the terrorists, the bad guys, the upper hand.

David B. CohenAssociate professor of political science, The University of Akron :

Mitt Romney: An Etch A Sketch Candidate in an Era of Permanent Ink

Mitt Romney’s Etch A Sketch moment may be the defining moment in what can only be described as a tumultuous primary season. Romney’s longtime aide Eric Fehrnstrom caused a firestorm of criticism for his boss when he said on CNN that the general election offered a chance to hit the “reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again.” When scholars perform their post-mortem of the 2012 campaign, they may be able to point to the Etch A Sketch moment as the precise point in time when Mitt Romney lost the election.

Fehrnstrom’s comments are both illustrative and important in two very different ways. First, Etch A Sketch may well be the last straw for many conservatives who already do not trust Romney. Whether it is Romney’s Mormon faith, the moderate policy positions he cultivated as Massachusetts governor, or the air of inauthenticity that clings to Romney like an ill-fitting suit, conservatives have never embraced him.

The Etch A Sketch comments validate the feeling among conservatives that Romney has no core, that he is a political chameleon who will do or say anything to win, that he is not one of them. Etch A Sketch may not cost Romney the nomination, but it could very well cost him the general election should he be the Republican Party nominee. The first order of business for any presidential campaign is to turn out the base in November. And if part of the GOP base decides to stay home rather than vote for their party’s candidate that they view as a charlatan, especially in crucial battleground states like Ohio and Virginia, Romney cannot win.

Secondly, the Etch A Sketch comments reveal that the Romney campaign is utilizing a playbook that is outdated in the 21st Century. There is no reset button in presidential politics—not anymore. The ubiquity of social media means that the lines drawn on the Etch A Sketch during the primary season are drawn in permanent ink. You can shake the toy as much as you like but the lines will still be there. Every event is recorded. Every speech, every public utterance, every awkward joke lives on in perpetuity, only one Google search away from being the next viral campaign ad run by the opposition. I’m pretty sure that the Obama campaign is adept at navigating that series of tubes we call the Internet, collecting for later use every Romney misstep, gaffe, and controversial statement from tree height to Cadillacs to Planned Parenthood. In 2012, a candidate can no longer tack to the extremes of their party during the primary season only to sprint to the middle during the fall campaign without repercussion. The social media microscope—often primed by a well-conceived 140 character tweet—makes that impossible.

It’s a shame when U.S. domestic politics plays a central role in national security conversations and decisions. To practically anyone that knows anything about Iraq, Michele Flournoy’s opinion piece in Monday’s POLITICO – “Iraq is a testament to Obama leadership” – is laughable.

Iraq, and our precipitous withdrawal, is not a testament to President Obama’s leadership. It is in fact the opposite, a testament to why he failed to position Iraq as the strategic partner with the United States they were poised to become.

When I left Iraq in November 2010 after a year on the ground working with the Third Infantry Division in the northern seven provinces, violence was down, cooperation was up, and the country was slowly headed in the right direction. It wasn’t perfect – far from it – there were still huge hurdles and challenges, but with the U.S. military and State Department as the “honest brokers” among the Sunni, Shiite, Kurds and other groups, a peaceful, unified, U.S.-friendly Iraq was in sight.

All of the above opportunity was lost when President Obama completely withdrew U.S. forces and left behind no residual force. And now we read in recent weeks that the State Department will not have the number of officials originally planned in country. Instead of a meaningful civilian and military presence in Iraq to guide their young democracy, we completely abandoned the situation and now the country is floundering.

All you need to know to counter Flournoy’s “head in the sand, rosy portrait for political purposes” view of the situation in Iraq is in Friday's Washington Times. The headline reads – “Allawi says Iran ‘swallowing’ Iraq after winning U.S. war.” Other points in the interview from Ayad Allawi (former Iraqi Prime Minister and current opposition leader to President Nouri al-Maliki) include –

“…the United States is ignoring an ‘emerging dictatorship” in (Iraq)…”

‘…Tehran ‘is becoming the dominant feature of Iraq…’”

“some U.S. officials ‘concede secretly’ that ‘Iran won, got the advantage of what happened in Iraq.’”

Violence is up in the Iraq, political dissension is at its highest level in years and meddling from Iran is non-stop. This is what Michele Fluornoy and the Obama Administration are touting as victory and good leadership?

The State Department responded to Allawi’s statements yesterday by saying they are committed to acting as a broker and creating a “unified, peaceful and democratic Iraq.” These talking points are about three years old. I’m curious to know how we doing that with no meaningful military or diplomatic presence in country? Make no mistake – without Americans in the room guiding the process, there will not be a unified or peaceful Iraq.

Of course, none of this really matters because it is an election year in the U.S. and no one wants facts to get in the way of a good narrative regarding Obama’s “leadership” in Iraq.

Equality and freedom are intertwined. For Trayvon Martin, and countless other young people live with the fear of being gunned down by cruel, ignorant vigilantes. Other victims of violence find tremendous comfort in the knowledge there are citizens that will step into the breach.

Americans must recognize the validity of both arguments and work to build a better society. Raise better children. Hold officials and each other accountable.

Ours is a great nation. For too long domestic political squabbles and the fundraising machines that fuel them have divided us. It is time to embrace equality in a real way.

The Trayvon Martin case has rightfully dominated the news this past week. For once, the National Rifle Association has not had the opportunity to weasel out of another tragedy of their making. When Gabby Giffords was shot in the head - and other, including a 9-year-old were killed - a year ago January, it of course was a crazy guy. I mean who could ever stop that? (Background checks that would keep a guy from getting a gun who was rejected by the military, for a series of substance abuse and emotional problems for one, but we won't re-litigate that here).

The same with the Chardon tragedy just a few weeks ago. The kid's grandfather was just exercising his God given right to let guns lie around his barn with no idea where they were. But this time, as much as they are trying to claim this outcome was not the intent of a shoot-first law, of course it is. It is about immunizing the 1% from having to deal with how they treat the riff raff, or the 99%. As soon as we all realize this, the healthier this debate will be.

It is not about 2nd Amendment rights or having the ability to hunt. But protecting the privileged in gated communities when they happen to see someone who makes them uncomfortable, someone who shouldn't be intruding on their peaceful day behind their big gate.

We have watched as the 99% has rightfully occupied Wall Street, as people enriched themselves by destroying your pension. And as Big Pharma spent a year under attack by fighting to protect their right to profit off of denying you necessary prescriptions. In this case, arms dealers are profiting off of putting your life in the hands of George Zimmerman. It is why the National Rifle Association, nothing more than a front group for gun manufacturers, has pushed these laws. It is why corporate front group the American Legislative Exchange Council has done the same. They get rich when more guns are sold. The rest of us die.

It is time for all of us, the middle class, minority communities, working people - the 99% - to Occupy ALEC and the NRA.

For two years, challengers have made an appealing, but ultimately fallacious, argument against the individual mandate to purchase health care insurance. They claim that while the Constitution’s Commerce Clause allows Congress to regulate people who are voluntarily engaged in economic transactions, Congress cannot require people to buy a good or service solely because they are living in the United States. In this view, the power to mandate purchases would leave us vulnerable to an unlimited federal authority. Today, we must buy health care coverage, tomorrow we might have to buy vegetables or GM cars.

But if the goal is to protect the public against an expansive federal power, striking down Obamacare will not in fact serve that purpose. If the Supreme Court invalidates the individual mandate, the justices will protect the public only against mandates to purchase health care insurance and a few other kinds of insurance that must be procured in advance of a voluntary economic transaction.

Of course, a ruling against the mandate would mean that Congress could not force us to go out and buy vegetables or GM cars. But the government has other ways to make us buy those goods. Congress still would have the power to require grocery stores and restaurants to include vegetables with every sale, and it still would have the power to require service stations to sell gasoline only to owners of GM vehicles.

Perhaps this demonstrates that the Court needs to curtail the ability of Congress to regulate the terms of economic transactions. But then the justices would have to invalidate all kinds of laws that impose important conditions on economic transactions. Currently, you cannot buy a new automobile without seat belts, air bags or catalytic converters, you cannot buy a new baby’s crib without safety latches, and you cannot buy a new television set without a V-chip. There is no way for the Court to draw a principled line between requiring sales of seat belts with every sale of a car and requiring sales of vegetables with every sale of food (say with an exception if you could prove you had already bought vegetables that day or week).

In any event, history tells us that Congress has exercised considerable self-restraint when it comes to purchase mandates. As one of the courts of appeals pointed out, Congress never has required homeowners to purchase flood insurance as a condition of building a house in a flood plain, even though the Constitution clearly would allow for that and even though taxpayers end up footing the bill for flood relief. When all is said and done, Obamacare critics simply have not explained why we need the courts to protect us from being overwhelmed by purchase mandates.

Health Care Reform: Because Being a Woman Is Not a Pre-Existing Medical Condition

Though two years have passed since that fateful night when Speaker Nancy Pelosi gaveled in healthcare reform, I remember the moment vividly. It was almost midnight on March 21, 2010. Like millions of families across America, I gazed into the television, holding my infant daughter, and watched as the dream became reality. It was a defining moment for the American family. Until then, reform was a legislative milestone beyond history's reach. In recent years, patients were denied care due to medical discrimination and skyrocketing health costs bankrupted families and small businesses faster than they could say "Chapter 7." Then as now, Republicans threatened to shred the American safety net of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, making healthcare reform a necessity.

This milestone is personal to me because my young daughter Isabella was born during the healthcare debate. Like millions of Americans, my husband Peter and I quickly learned that from the moment you are pregnant, insurance companies don't ask "are you excited? Hoping for a boy or a girl?" They ask – "where is your premium? Were you planning on getting pregnant before you got this plan?" Not "what can we do to help you give birth to a happy healthy child?" – but "how much is your pregnancy going to cost us?" ??While pregnant, I battled my insurance company over a gestational diabetes test that my doctor had proscribed. They kept acting as if it was somehow MY idea to give myself a migraine with that horrid orange syrup and remove vials of blood in a lab. I kept reminding them that my doctor saw this prenatal testing as a necessity not a luxury – and that their $2,500 could save the estimated $250,000 that might be incurred if my baby was born with diabetes.

When my baby Isabella was 7 months old, we got to introduce her to President Obama. I told him "Mr. President, I'm still fighting the insurance companies over her prenatal care - we have to stop this!" and he responded with confidence and optimism: "We'll get it done." That was October 2009. Well we all know what happened. People told the president "dial it back, don't do this now, it will never get passed, change is not possible." But he was true to his word. As entrenched interests pushed back every inch of the way, millions of grassroots activists propelled healthcare reform forward, and with a Democratic Congress, he "got it done." ??

Now thanks to the Affordable Care Act, millions of pregnant mothers can have those prenatal tests my insurance company didn't want to pay for until I badgered them into it over a year later. Now millions of expectant parents can plan healthy pregnancies without the stress of worry over how much they can do to test and treat any potential health issues for their babies. And now they can receive well baby visits. As a mom, I see health care reform as a promise that my daughter’s generation won’t know a time when healthcare isn't a cornerstone of the American dream or when being a woman is a pre-existing medical condition.

For as long as I can remember in politics, Democrats have always taken it on the chin from Republicans about not being pro-business or not being concerned about small business issues. An event this week in Washington D.C. proved otherwise. I had the opportunity to join a delegation of about 25 business leaders (Republicans, Democrats, and Independents) from my hometown of Kansas City, Mo. This group consisted of CEO’s, small business leaders, entrepreneurs, and elected officials. It had the clientele of a Chamber of Commerce event. The only thing was we were at the White House meeting with senior officials from the administration to share business ideas, work together on solving problems, and identify ways that the federal government could help or get out of the way to make Kansas City, Mo. grow and thrive.

Interactive dialogue between the group and the chief economist for the U.S. Department of Commerce, deputy secretary of education, President Obama’s top advisors, and the assistant secretary for administration at the Department of Health and Human Services all took place in D.C. Shocking right? Not really, but that is what many political pundits and opposition to the president would like you to believe.

The fact that the White House and the administration is reaching out and bringing individuals into the policy making process is positive. Being part of the process and reaching out to the business community, whether large or small, should stand above the political rhetoric filling up our heads these days. All of the relative and salient points made at this meeting will go into a report for President Obama. I applaud the White House, White House Business Council, Business Forward, and the Administration for putting together these kinds of forums. Democrats do care about business and economic growth in our cities, communities, and nation. The fact that they invited individuals from Kansas City, Mo., to be part of finding solutions to the problems that face our country and are giving us the ability to help shape public policy for our city and nation says a lot about this administration.

Americans from cities throughout this country want to be a part of the process, they want to feel government is listening, they want to know people in Washington D.C. care about them. The White House and Business Forward made people from the heartland not only feel this, but also allowed us to see it with our own two eyes. Problem Solving above Point Scoring?!? This is a practice I hope continues in 2012 and beyond.

Over the weekend, The New York Times ran a piece on Gloria Steinem and the birth of feminism, calling her “A Woman Like No Other.” In the political sphere, the same can be said for Hillary Clinton. In fact, just as the Republican contest seems to be winding down with Mitt Romney the likely nominee to run against Barack Obama in 2012, talk of 2016 is getting more attention. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand who succeeded Clinton as New York Senator when Clinton became Secretary of State asserted this week, “I’m going to be one of the first to ask Hillary to run in 2016.”

The question is: What would make Hillary want to jump into the ring again, dusting off and modernizing her “Hillary 2008” machine? Clinton herself has expressed no interest in running again. In 2016, she would be 69 years old, the same age Ronald Reagan was when he ran for president and won in 1980.

It probably depends on two things: the state of women in 2016 and whether anyone else surfaces to fill Clinton’s shoes. The Republican contest has brought to the fore an attack on many rights that women have come to believe in after the revolutionary days of Steinem in the 1970s. But with attacks on Planned Parenthood and reproductive freedoms, many women are looking for strong voices to speak up on their behalf. Recently, Hillary did just that on International Women’s Day, remarking: “Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me…Yes, it is hard to believe that even here at home, we have to stand up for women’s rights and reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because American needs to set an example for the entire world.” When Hillary talks, people listen.

Can anyone full her shoes? There is no heir apparent, yet. It was interesting this week when Clinton, backed by the State Department, endorsed fully another attempt to find out what happened to famed aviator Amelia Earhart; she disappeared trying to circumnavigate the globe in 1937. In giving her backing, Clinton said that Earhart “gave people hope and she inspired them to dream bigger and bolder.”

Funny, this is exactly what many people think of Clinton and why it will be so hard for her to avoid calls to pursue her once obvious and almost achieved goal of becoming the first female president of the United States.

"Birther: noun 1. Denier of Barack Obama's having been born in the United States and thereby his eligibility to serve as president. 2. Denier of obvious or readily demonstrated truths with malicious intent and resulting in deleterious civil discord."

It took only minutes after its release this week for Senator Paul Ryan's budget to bring out the Democratic birthers in the way a lantern draws mosquitos from a swamp. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee bellowed with all the sincerity of Bernie Madoff that Medicare requires no change of any consequence to its beneficiaries. So, the earth is not warming, Neil Armstrong never walked on the moon, and Columbus didn't die he just fell off the edge? At least the Republican National Committee's members weren't the ones demanding the president's birth certificate.

Ryan's overall budget proposal is far from balanced in either numbers and impact, but it is still far more constructive than the White House's cynical retort that the plan will "destroy Medicare as we know it." If Republicans were really out to destroy Medicare they'd simply let it rot the same way Democrats are allowing it to do.

When confronted on this point, congressional Democrats retreated behind two demonstrably implausible assertions: that Obamacare will reduce medical inflation to a level sustainable within Medicare's revenue projections, and that in any case that the rich can pick up the tab. Of course, not even the White House believes this nor, most recently, does Congress's Joint Committee on Tax Policy in its evaluation of the so-called Buffett Rule. 99 percent of millionaires pay an average of about 25 percent of their adjusted gross incomes in taxes; nailing them for another 5 percent, as the Buffet Rule would try to do, won't come close to covering the Medicare funding gap let alone the rest of the federal deficit.

Fortunately, there are a few thoughtful Democrats around to point out the folly of those in Congress. Paul Starr, co-editor of The American Prospect, the progressive standard-bearer of "liberal ideas, committed to a just society," as it describes itself, acknowledged that Democrats too will have to end Medicare as we know it if they want to save it. Specifically, Starr argued that, "the fairest and most effective way to control Medicare's costs will be to bring health insurance for seniors under the same rules and policies that govern health insurance for everyone else." So let's take his readers at their collective word on Obamacare, which was that providing income-adjusted premium support in a private insurance market is a fair approach to affordable health care.

Now, you can debate the size of the premium subsidy, as Starr does for poor retirees in his critique of Ryan, but you cannot dispute the overwhelming similarity between Ryan's approach for seniors and the one so enthusiastically embraced by congressional Democrats less than two years ago for everyone else. Even Obama accepted Medicare means-testing and an increase in the eligibility age (both pillars of the Ryan proposal) during the 2011 budget negotiations.

It seems, then, that Ryan and Obama might both care enough for the truth to find a mutually acceptable solution. Republicans have quieted their birthers; it's time for Democrats to do the same.

A report on public corruption raised eyebrows this week by commending states like New Jersey and Illinois, while the “most corrupt” states included North and South Dakota, Wyoming, and Maine. Of course, states were graded not for how corrupt they are, but for the strength of their anti-corruption laws. Previous studies, like one just last month by the University of Illinois at Chicago analyzing U.S. DOJ stats on corruption convictions, find, essentially, that it’s the biggest states that have not just the most corruption but also the most corruption per person.

The same phenomenon may explain the prevalence of voluntary charity in smaller, rural “red” states, and higher taxes and more public goods – because of “free rider” problems – in larger, more urban “blue” states. (The counter-argument that small-town, red-state folk are only generous because they’re homogeneous is undercut somewhat by another study last month finding that racial minorities fare better in smaller cities in red states than in big, blue cities.)

In sum, Americans everywhere may share the same basic aspirations, but liberal and conservative regions seem to face different practical demands in realizing those values

Elayne RappingProfessor of American Studies, State University of New York at Buffalo :

Morality and the GOP

There has been an awful lot of talk on the part of Republicans lately about the moral decline of the nation. To hear them tell it we are on the way to Armageddon, our collective souls lost to the devil himself. And in this doomsday rhetoric the ghost of the Sixties looms large and alarming. It would seem, according to the most of the GOP candidates, that much that is wrong with our current society can be linked to that obviously degenerate decade with its "anything goes" view of what’s right and wrong.

Rick Santorum for example is fond of referring to Woodstock, that icon of Sixties depravity, as “the great American orgy.” And we know how much he hates orgies. And Newt Gingrich seems to see latter day “countercultural McGoverniks” everywhere he looks. “Disgusting,” shameful,” “contemptible” are his epithets for those whose private behavior offends him. And there is an awful lot that offends him, much of it rooted in Sixties “nihilism" and “moral rot.”

If we look at the real legacy of the Sixties however, with all its excesses and idiocies - and there were certainly many - I’d say it stacks up pretty well compared to the moral code implicit in the GOP agenda. In fact, if we judge morality as a function of how we treat each other as human beings, I would give the Sixties at least two cheers. It was responsible for major moral victories in the realms of women’s rights, civil rights and yes, gay rights - for gays after all are human beings - expanding freedoms and opportunities in all these areas. Much needs to done of course, but the progress made in the Sixties, and its inherent moral imperative, cannot be denied.

Now look at what the Republicans say about these matters. They would deprive gays of the right to legally marry; better they should live in sin as befits the sinners they presumably are. They would deprive women of the right to control their own bodies in many ways, since male legislators know best what choices women should have. And in many states they would find ways to make it harder for African Americans to enjoy their hard won right to vote. And that's just for starters. Does any of this seem moral? Does it embody the values of fairness and equality that are the bases of a democratic moral vision? Hardly.

Mitt Romney, who seems to be a shoo in for the presidential nomination at this point, is not nearly so vociferous about these issues, but when forced to speak about morality at all, he heartily supports these measures. He must keep the support of the conservative base afterall. But the heart of his own campaign—and more importantly the social and economic vision of the party he would lead to the White House--is infused with its own moral vision: the moral vision of corporate capitalism gone amok and running rough shod over everyone who gets in its way. It’s this model that Romney is selling. It’s the model of Bain Capital which made millions by chasing profits over human beings, most famously for large scale firings after acquiring new companies, because as we all know he likes to fire people. It is a model that would continue to go easy on the Wall Street scions responsible for our financial meltdown, none of whom have seen the inside of a prison, while being tough on victimless crimes like drug use which would be better combatted through treatment programs. But of course we have no money for this more humane approach, or for most of the social programs helping those in need, many of which would go under the knife if Paul Ryan’s new budget is adopted.

When you take a good look at it, then, the moral vision of the Republican Party is pretty scary. Maybe they should just stop talking about it before they get into more trouble than they are already in.

Paul Ryan delivered on a doppelganger budget proposal that looks the polar opposite of what the president rolled out. Ryan cuts debt, doesn’t raise taxes, shrinks government and invests in defense rather than cutting it. There is so much work to be on defense from reinvesting in new capabilities, to recovering from the grind in Iraq and Afghanistan and preparing to meet future challenges that even Ryan’s investments won’t be enough to meet all the nation’s security needs.

But….Ryan points the way. The “Saving the American Dream” plan is Ryan on steroids — balancing the budget in 10 years, no tax hikes, every class of American better-off than they are now, and fully-funding defense for decades. Now that Ryan has dropped his budget and the world as we know it has not come to end Washington should take enough courage that it can go bold---serious entitlement reform that ensures the safety net will be there, serious tax reform that unleashes the power of the US economy, and a strong national defense.

Ken FeltmanPast president; International Association of Political Consultants :

Gingrich has overstayed his welcome with an ironic result

The big news from Louisiana this weekend will not be Rick Santorum's victory. He is cruising toward a big win. Conservative voters are abandoning Gingrich for Santorum, with a smaller number going to Mitt Romney.

Most voters are done with Gingrich. One put it this way: "Gingrich is like the guest who never leaves." Another said "Why doesn't he get the message?" A Republican official said Gingrich is in danger of "destroying any goodwill he has left."

Gingrich may not care. But Romney and Santorum do care and will watch how the former Gingrich supporters split in Louisiana. So far, polls seem to point to a bigger slice going to Santorum than national polls have been indicating. But it may be too late. The one last hope Santorum had was to consolidate the "anybody but Mitt" voters and hope that the media reported a head-to-head Santorum-Romney race. That will not happen now. Gingrich lingered too long.

After Illinois, the media seemed to shift. The race is all but over, they seemed to be saying. The nomination is all but decided. How ironic that Gingrich wanted to stop Romney. Perhaps he has instead prevented Santorum from putting up a serious head-to-head challenge to Romney.

The tragic killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida has lessons here in the metro area for the state of Maryland. The U.S. Court of Appeals’ decision this month regarding concealed-carry permits means that Maryland residents no longer must show a "good and substantial reason" to carry a handgun outside.

Thanks to this one federal judge’s decision – a decision that the Washington Post editorial board thinks should be repealed – we can expect to see Maryland's high rates of violence increase.

Already Maryland is one of the ten most violent states in America, with the third highest rates of homicide, the ninth highest rates of violent crime, and the tenth highest rates of police employees per capita.

In our rankings on the U.S. Peace Index – an index that ranks states by their levels of peacefulness - we look at five indicators of violence: homicide, violent crime, incarceration, police per capita, and availability of small arms.

Maryland ranked 41st on the 2011 U.S. Peace Index, a ranking that could worsen given the latest news coming out of U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg's courtroom.

By removing the requirement to show a good and substantial reason to carry a handgun in public, it makes it all the easier to increase Maryland's homicide and violent crime rates.

Maryland's high rates of violence are already costing almost $10 billion annually. As Governor O'Malley pursues creative deficit-cutting measures like increasing the gas tax to balance budget deficits, he should keep in mind that Maryland's high rates of violent crime and homicide undermine limited money supply, not only in medical costs and lost economic productivity (at $1.3 million per homicide), but also in the high costs associated with incarceration.

If the governor wants to boost Maryland budgets, then he should cut costs from containing violence. The way to do that is to lower Maryland's scores on the five indicators previously mentioned. The new ruling by the US District Judge to unfetter the carrying of weapons in public, however, does just the opposite.

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